Blog Archive

Welcome to the Blog Archive for Itowler.com

You can use this to browse older postings, by year and then month. To get started, just click on a year, and then click on the month that you are interested, and you will be shown all of the blog posts in that year and month.

One of my ancestors is Frederick Hoffman. Frederick died on this day 123 years ago. On February 25th, 1889 in Indiana Frederick Hoffman died sudden and unexpectedly. While searching for information the Hoffman's I found an interesting record for Frederick Hoffman. The record is a type that I had (and still have not seen an other) before, an official Coroner's Inquest.

The post-mortem examination of the body of Frederick Hoffman, who lived about eight miles east of this city, resulted in the finding by Dr. J. Y. Hitt that the deceased came to his death from apoplexy. There was a small amount of opium salt in the stomach but not sufficient to cause death. The post-mortem was held on account of the peculiar circumstances under which Mr. Hoffman died, the seeming unconcern of his family about him and the openly expressed belief of some of the neighbors that his death had not resulted from natural causes.

The obit mentions a Coroner's inquest, and I was able to find the Inquest in the records at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. The inquest record that I have are just images, with no transcription provided, so I had to do my own. For the most part it was a fairly straight forward, but there were a few sections that were a little difficult to understand. See my transcription below:

I have been interested in my families’ genealogy for around 10 years now. I remember that my first real start was in the summer of 2002, when my uncle Phil gave me some of the research he had done on the family. I looked at the info that he gave me, and then set it aside. I did not really get started on doing some real research until about 6 years ago. I have now compiled a great start on my families’ genealogy and it has been a pretty interesting process.

Several times I have run across an attitude that I do not understand. I have met individuals that are unwilling to share their work (I have not encountered with my surname, but rather other collateral lines). I just do not understand this idea at all. You can find many posts on the internet about people who do not want to have their work “Stolen” etc. It just does not make any sense to me, and here is why:

The 2012 Winterfest had around 54 different brewers (plus or minus a few). You were given a glass at the start of it, and you simply visited the various brewers’ tables and sampled their beer. Pours were around 3-4 oz’s, and there was no limit (I.e. you did not have to have tickets to get a taste of the beer). Many of the brewer’s were from Indiana or nearby Kentucky or Pennsylvania, but there were some of the bigger, more well know National Brewer’s like Sam Adams, Stone and Sierra Nevada.

In addition to the 50 or so brewer’s that were housed inside, there were 2 outdoor areas, which in my opinion had some of the best beer at the event. The first of area outside was pouring beer from Firkins. Ok, little history lesson here…. A firkin is actually a unit of measure for volume. In old English and with reference to beer, it is equivalent to nine imperial gallons, or seventy two pints, or roughly 41 liters. Today, firkins typically refer to beer that is also known as cask ale, cask conditioned beer or Real ale. Firkins usually are an unfiltered, unpasteurized beer, which is served from a cask without using a pressurized gas like nitrogen or carbon dioxide. Winterfest had 8 – 10 firkins that were being poured, and they went quickly. Halfway through the event they were all gone. My favorite beer from the Firkin tent was one called Decrepit, but I have no idea who brews it.